If you had to leave DC for better high school options….

[Anonymous]

OP, Falls Church City has its own contained school district. There are two elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. The high school has about 850 students. You could easily rent an apartment inbound for FCC and be on the orange line.

It's a wonderful community. When we left DC, we hoped to buy there but were priced out and ended up in Vienna (which love, but Madison isn't small). Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Watch out. Falls Church City housing is pricey across the board, with low inventory. We looked for a year for 3-bedroom fixer house there under $1 million and gave up.

[Anonymous]

Look into Catholic schools maybe

[Anonymous]

+1 Maybe a school like St. Anselms?

[Anonymous]

Or Seton if a girl

[Anonymous]

My spouse is a high school teacher who over 35 years has taught in various schools in Fairfax, Arlington, and DCPS. In my spouse's opinion, there is no DCPS high school that is better than the worst high school in Fairfax or Arlington County.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks for the responses.

I need public transportation to get to work downtown.

Are any of the DC suburban schools known for smaller classroom sizes at least? My kid is bright but very good at getting distracted in large classes and generally lost in the crowd. He isn’t rowdy or anything; he is very quiet, gets intimidated easily, and just can’t learn like that.

My kids almost never had large classes at W-L High School in Arlington. The student-teacher ratios seem reasonable, even though the school is enormous.

[Anonymous]

I plan on moving to Arlington due to this problem, because, like the earlier commenter, I think there are more good public college options in Va. than in Maryland.
But yeah, if you need a small school, Falls Church is your only option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My spouse is a high school teacher who over 35 years has taught in various schools in Fairfax, Arlington, and DCPS. In my spouse's opinion, there is no DCPS high school that is better than the worst high school in Fairfax or Arlington County.

Ask your spouse if their experience includes Walls and Banneker, or just JR. Because for 95% of kids, JR, FCPS, and Arlington are all perfectly capable of meeting their needs. And for the top 5%, I don’t think there’s a one size fits all approach to what’s “best” for that individual.

[Anonymous]

There are decent small charter high schools in DC:
Sojourner Truth
Cap City

[Anonymous]

No there aren’t. No Way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are decent small charter high schools in DC:
Sojourner Truth
Cap City

We’ve entered the lottery every year and gotten nothing. Maybe there’s still a chance, but I’m not optimistic. - OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are decent small charter high schools in DC:
Sojourner Truth
Cap City

We’ve entered the lottery every year and gotten nothing. Maybe there’s still a chance, but I’m not optimistic. - OP

I'm sorry to hear that. It has worked out well for my family. Our backup was Private, and there are definitely a ton of small private high schools in the city if you're open to that.

My son, who is a bit particular (Audhd), ended up deciding that he wanted a larger school for high school after a small middle school. Unless you're already at the high school level these things often change.

[Anonymous]

If you need a smaller s hook I would beg, borrow or steal to move to falls church city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My spouse is a high school teacher who over 35 years has taught in various schools in Fairfax, Arlington, and DCPS. In my spouse's opinion, there is no DCPS high school that is better than the worst high school in Fairfax or Arlington County.

Ask your spouse if their experience includes Walls and Banneker, or just JR. Because for 95% of kids, JR, FCPS, and Arlington are all perfectly capable of meeting their needs. And for the top 5%, I don’t think there’s a one size fits all approach to what’s “best” for that individual.

Really we are in Arlington and when we compare notes with friends whose kids are at JR it sounds like it is worse (kids regularly don’t have teachers for academic classes etc)